During NBA’s off-season, each year roughly from late June to late October--most of the league’s players will spend part of their time training so they can maintain the monster-level performances in the new season and make up their deficiencies. Some of the training methods are way beyond basketball.

Having been praised by many as the best ball-handlers of today’s NBA, Kyrie Irving from the Boston Celtics is too fast in handling for the defending player to see what happened before it’s too late.

Irving used dodgeball in his handling training sessions. First, he needs to keep handling the ball and hits back a ball thrown at him with the other hand. Second, Irving needs to receive a thrown ball to him almost at the same time as he passes the ball that he is handling to his training partner and keeps repeating the process quickly. Third, Irving and his partner keep passing three balls to each other one by one fast before he makes a shot.

Stephen Curry is probably the best 3-point shooter in NBA history but has often been underestimated with other skills. For his ball-handling training, Curry will first handle the ball with one hand and hits the tennis ball thrown to him back with the other hand before changing the jobs for the two hands quickly. After that, he will keep handling both the basketball and the tennis ball with two hands and replacing the balls regularly.

The Golden State Warriors are in the Bay area and not far from Silicon Valley, a place of innovation. One of the new ways of training Curry learns from there is: First, he handles two basketballs at the same time. Then he will handle a ball with one hand while doing puzzles on iPad. This will help him improve fast thinking, observing and decision-making simultaneously.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, the “Greek Freak” from the Milwaukee Bucks fell in love with boxing during the off-season in 2018 summer.

Boxing requires strength and power since it’s a sport that depends on the instantaneous release of great power. That is also what happens on the basketball court where players sprint and jump like an explosion. Moreover, boxing is also a skill of footwork and reflexes neither of which one wants to miss if he is to build something in the NBA.

If you want to make a list of the best pure shooters in NBA history, you should never forget about Kyle Korver who keeps a terrifying 43.1 percent of three-point shooting rates for the 15 seasons he has played. Every time he attempts to make a shot, you can barely see any emotional change on his face or body.

How did he do that? Since 2013, Korver started a training session of swimming into the Pacific Ocean on a four-meter-long oar while giant fish and dolphins pass by him. Then he joined the others and launched a swimming relay under the water with big rocks. Korver once upgraded the session by moving it to waters where sharks sometimes visit. All these were to help him remain calm under pressure that others cannot imagine.